I would like to hear the argument against providing the vaccine
Quote of note:
Menactra is generally expected to be the first of a series of new vaccines intended for 11-year-olds. The others include booster vaccines against tetanus, diphtheria and whooping cough and vaccines against cervical cancer and herpes.
Frightening parents about the consequences of failing to vaccinate their children will most likely be part of the campaign. For that task, meningococcal meningitis is ideal.
Panel Reviews New Vaccine That Could Be Controversial
By GARDINER HARRIS
A committee of experts meeting in Atlanta will debate today whether the government can afford to pay for a vaccine that could save the lives of nearly 3,000 people, many of them teenagers, from deaths caused over the next decade by a virulent bacterial meningitis.
The price of the new vaccine will most likely be $80 a dose. Vaccinating all 40 million people from age 11 to 20, as some experts have suggested, would cost the government $3.5 billion next year. That is more than $1 million a life spared, far more than health officials are normally willing to spend.
"How much would we have been willing to spend to save the victims of the 9/11 attacks, because that's the number of people we're talking about?" asked Dr. Paul A. Offit, the chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia who is a committee member. "I believe it's money well spent."
Dr. Jon S. Abramson, chairman of the pediatrics department at Wake Forest University Medical School and another committee member, said the government could not afford such a campaign.
